Upward Mobility Commission

The American dream is about upward mobility. It's a belief that with a reasonable amount of effort and prudence, you can get ahead — a belief that you have a realistic shot at being better off than your parents were.

The 2008-09 economic crisis and sluggish recovery put a dent in the dream for millions of Americans, particularly those just entering the labor market. But there is a deeper problem. Since the late 1970s, the incomes of Americans on the lower half of the income ladder have grown slowly. At the same time, Americans who grow up in low-income households face long odds of reaching the middle class, and those odds haven't improved in the past generation. Slow income growth and inequality of opportunity endanger the American dream of upward mobility.

The Yankelovich Center has formed a commission to recommend evidence-based strategies for increasing upward mobility. There is no shortage of proposed solutions. What we lack, and what policy makers most need, is information about the relative merits of such strategies.

The director of the project is Lane Kenworthy. Kenworthy studies the causes and consequences of living standards, poverty, inequality, mobility, employment, economic growth, social policy, taxes, public opinion, and politics in the United States and other affluent countries. His books include The Good Society, How Big Should Our Government Be? (2016), Social Democratic America (2014), Progress for the Poor (2011), Jobs with Equality (2008), Egalitarian Capitalism (2004), and In Search of National Economic Success (1995). Kenworthy is professor of sociology and Yankelovich Chair in Social Thought at UC San Diego.

The other members of the commission are:

Amanda Datnow, UC San Diego, Education Studies

Greg Duncan, UC Irvine, Education

Susan Dynarski, University of Michigan, Economics and Public Policy

Kathryn Edin, Johns Hopkins University, Sociology

Ron Haskins, Brookings Institution

Timothy Smeeding, University of Wisconsin, Public Policy

Bruce Western, Harvard University, Sociology

Experts from around the country will draw on social science research to estimate the likely impact of strategies to increase the degree to which economic growth reaches middle- and lower-income households:

Reduce the influence of the "shareholder value" orientation in publicly-owned firms: William Lazonick, University of Massachusetts-Lowell, Economics